Well I've been away on various trips yet again. The post for this trip was at the tail end of January leading into the first week if February. I met up with a bunch of friends who flew over from the UK and it was one heck of a road trip! We covered Nellis AFB for Red Flag 17-1, Coyote Summit, NAS Fallon and Rainbow Canyon. Sadly for NAS Fallon we were only able to cover the morning launch and recovery from the base tarmac.. On Recoveries a wind storm had moved in bringing cross wind gusts upto 45 knots! So the afternoon launch was cancelled.. You'll be able to see the sand blowing in the background of the Fallon shots. Anyways... enough rambling on with the shots. As usual Comments and Criticism always welcome good or bad.

Hi Rod,Great photo's. I'll be flying out for Red Flag 4 in August and plan an afternoon at Rainbow and the day wave at Coyote. Could I ask if the F16 was the only trade you got at Coyote or were there other longer distance movements? Was the location worth it?Cheers, Andrew

Hi Rod,Great photo's. I'll be flying out for Red Flag 4 in August and plan an afternoon at Rainbow and the day wave at Coyote. Could I ask if the F16 was the only trade you got at Coyote or were there other longer distance movements? Was the location worth it?Cheers, Andrew

Coyote in August!! Be warned it is HOT!!! I usually go to each fourth Red Flag as that is when the exotics usually play.. Rumour for 17-4 sofar is UAE and Chile. Coyote in August averages around 35 degrees a little cooler then Vegas but not much. Bring lots of water. This trip to Coyote was very limited.. First off was the limited amount of mud moving participants.. We did get a lowish F-35 and of course this F-16. Further out because of a heavy storm that moved in.. There was a four ship of very low F-16s, RAF and a Australian Herks that hugged the road near Rachel. Coyote is such a crap shoot.. This trip was the smallest amount of traffic I've see up there. Lots of Sonic Booms... But other trips I've caught Israeli F-16s,F-15 RAAMs, U.S. Skyhawks, F-16s, B-1Bs and Italian Typhoons all low and within my 500mm reach. If your up there in August, maybe I'll see you there.

Is the second F-35 (not the one refuelling) in the refuelling-shot carrying external stores?

That is it... Not sure what they are. But here is a massive crop shot.

Awesome selection Rod.Quick question, what setting was your camera on? The blue sky in a lot of those shots is really noisy.Andy

Thanks Andy.. Yeah I noticed that as well... Sadly the two days I was at Nellis.. The weather was changing so fast! Beautiful blue sky one minute and then dim overcast the next. We had a few storms move in for those two days so sadly I was shooting most of the shots bouncing between ISO200 and ISO400 and stops up to +3! I do think some it was my post editing as well. I couldn't believe that I was shooting blue sky with such a high ISO. But I know if I lowered it, I would have lost quite a few shots as the next cloud moved in and shaded everything out. Thankfully I only needed to shoot like that for about an hour so only buggered up some of the shots.

That explains it can remember being in the same situation at Nellis at my first Red Flag.

The external stores are Aim-9X.

The F-35 can only carry the Aim-9X externally, the RAF were planning to have the Asraam cleared for internal carriage but this has now been abandoned to save money and is also external only.

Really smart for a stealth fighter for its dogfight missile externally only!

Internally the '35 will carry at least two Aim-120 on dedicated launchers with a full internal load eventually being 6.

The Meteor will eventually be cleared for the RAF but not until the redesigned version has flown/been developed (with smaller fins) as it currently doesn't fit on the two dedicated internal Air to Air rails! The bay is also needing a redesign to fit as the UK never worked with the US on the design to ensure it would fit UK weapons despite being the only tier 1 partner. The result - MOD having to fork out to maintain a two type BVR missile stockpile!

Additionally, integration of Storm Shadow has been cancelled meaning until Spear Cap 3 comes online in around 10 years, the carrier fleet will have no stand off attack capability!!!!

Sorry for taking over the thread with that Rod but thought it prudent to highlight stupid UK armament decisions lol.

Fumbles wrote:Coyote in August!! Be warned it is HOT!!! I usually go to each fourth Red Flag as that is when the exotics usually play.. Rumour for 17-4 sofar is UAE and Chile. Coyote in August averages around 35 degrees a little cooler then Vegas but not much. Bring lots of water. This trip to Coyote was very limited.. First off was the limited amount of mud moving participants.. We did get a lowish F-35 and of course this F-16. Further out because of a heavy storm that moved in.. There was a four ship of very low F-16s, RAF and a Australian Herks that hugged the road near Rachel. Coyote is such a crap shoot.. This trip was the smallest amount of traffic I've see up there. Lots of Sonic Booms... But other trips I've caught Israeli F-16s,F-15 RAAMs, U.S. Skyhawks, F-16s, B-1Bs and Italian Typhoons all low and within my 500mm reach. If your up there in August, maybe I'll see you there.

Thanks for the pointers Rod. I'll be stopping off at Rainbow on my way to Vegas from Yosemite on Wed 16 Aug and have all the following day at either Nellis or Coyote so plan to do Nellis until 2hr before the notam'd mass launch then hightail it up to Rachel. Will be hoping for a few A10's but if the UAE and Chile are playing it could be an F16 fest. I can only spare those two days so will just have to hope for the best. Would be good to meet on either hill if you're there.

To those of you in the know, is there anything going on at Nellis when there's not a Red\Green Flag on? I might be going to Nevada in April and was wondering if it's worth spending a couple of hours near Nellis even if there's no exercise going on at that time?

Agg wrote:To those of you in the know, is there anything going on at Nellis when there's not a Red\Green Flag on? I might be going to Nevada in April and was wondering if it's worth spending a couple of hours near Nellis even if there's no exercise going on at that time?

I was over that way for my honeymoon roadtrip, and my wife and I stopped off at the speedway entrance for about 45 minutes on our way to Monument Valley and we saw a fair amount of activity. It wasn't during an exercise period, but we saw a couple of tooled up aggressor F16s take-off, a couple of F15s and a C-130 Compass Call came in. Am hoping to go back there in the near future

D90Man wrote:Verreli - can you give me more details about "notam'd mass launch" that you mention in your post? Where would one find this?

Notam's or 'notices to airmen' is a public domain messaging system for pilots. The one I use in the states is https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/ and for Nellis use the airfield ICAO identifier KLSV. During Red Flag the airfield posts a notam detailing the times and description of exceptional activity such as putting 40+ aircraft in the sky in quick succession. This doesn't guarantee it will happen but states the plan in the best interests of safety. It does not limit activity (unless that is the purpose of the notam) so you can get movements outside the notam times. The UK operates the same system. I get my info from http://notaminfo.com/ukmap which is pretty easy to digest.

Agg wrote:To those of you in the know, is there anything going on at Nellis when there's not a Red\Green Flag on? I might be going to Nevada in April and was wondering if it's worth spending a couple of hours near Nellis even if there's no exercise going on at that time?

There's often stuff happening at Nellis outside Green and Red Flag times, there are a lot of aircraft based there that fly year round. The Weapons School (WA coded jets) course is gearing up for it's graduation exercise in June, and that often attracts stuff, and the OT stuff flies most working days. You also get stuff visiting to use the ranges for their own benefit. The quiet times are just after the end of the Weapons School courses; late June and late December.